I haven’t seemed to hit the bandwidth wall, yet, but probably tomorrow. Early AM I’ll be upgrading my account at ValueWeb. I think they’ve gone and changed packages and never told me. I originally had a $19.95/mo. account with 5GB storage and 10GB bandwidth. Later, it went up to $21.95, then $23.95.

Now I check their site and the lowest package they offer is 5GB storage, 100GB bandwidth for $24.95. So, if my package doesn’t exist anymore, why not offer to upgrade me to this new package? They already increased the price for what I have twice. Did they think I’d balk at one more dollar for ten times the bandwidth?

Wait, I know why they didn’t say anything. Last month I exceeded my bandwidth and was charged an extra $0.04 per megabyte, leading to a surprise $63 bill on top of my $23.95. If they warn me about that, they lose money. Ah, capitalism. That’s what I get for adding more pictures to the Writ, hosting the photos for my class reunion, and supplying web graphics for Operation Yellow Elephant, I suppose.

Won’t someone please buy a bumper sticker? I’m trying to be a good capitalist, I really am! And if anyone has any good, cheaper ISP solutions that offer MySQL database support, I’m all ears.

To compound my frustration, my Comcast (Latin for: shitty broadband) hi-speed line keeps dropping and my six-year-old Pentium III VAIO is about ready to bite the dust. But at least the cable TV they provide keeps giving me lousy analog signal on the local channels, the DVR keeps manfunctioning, and the OnDemand usually won’t some in or comes in like streaming video on a 28K modem. I’m composing this from my office, which thankfully is but a ten minute walk away.